During an interview recently, a famous Irish doctor revealed a straightforward but effective method that people could employ to attempt to reverse the ageing process.
During an interview on a popular Irish radio talk show, Irish doctor Professor Luke O’Neill explained how managing and decreasing your levels of stress can aid in slowing down or even reversing the ageing process to an extent.
He told The Pat Kenny Show, “We know stress is a bad thing, don’t we? And there has been evidence before that if you’re stressed, you age a bit more quickly”.
The Cell Metabolism journal – published a study on the ageing process
The journal Cell Metabolism recently published a study on the ageing process whose findings suggested that stressful situations can have the adverse effect of speeding up the ageing process.
The study also revealed that other things, such as being pregnant, having Covid, or undergoing surgery, can also play an important role as they put the body under a lot of stress.
However, on a positive note, the study also found that this can be reversed. Luke O’Neill, Professor of Biochemistry at Trinity College Dublin, explained how during an interview on the Newstalk radio station.
Professor Luke O’Neill – explained how people could inadvertently be accelerating the ageing process
Professor Luke O’Neil explained that the study confirms how easily people can inadvertently accelerate the ageing process by getting stressed.
Speaking about the study, he said, “Now, this study really confirms that. Pregnancy, interestingly, was one that ages a woman. PTSD is a big one, serious surgery, and Covid. So severe Covid speeds up the ageing process. It’s all about your biological age versus your chronological age”.
Prof O’Neill also explained how your DNA changes over time and how people who experience more trauma are more likely to age much quicker.
“They can measure what’s called epigenetic change. What that means is as you get older, your DNA changes – it gets stained with chemical marks. That increases as you age. If that speeds up, that means your biological age is increasing. They’ve very precise measurements on this”.
Reversing the ageing progress – something everyone wishes they could do
When asked how people should reverse the ageing process, Prof O’Neill explained that the key was effectively managing your stress levels, which will allow your body to heal and will have the positive effect of reducing the speed of this epigenetic change.
“The most important part of this study is [that] it can be reversed. If you’ve been through a traumatic incident, there’s evidence you’ve aged more quickly. If you can then relax a bit and destress after the incident, you can reverse this and clean the DNA […] and you can reverse this.
“We know that destressing is so important, but this kind of confirms this in a biochemical way. It’s all about handling stress: even if you’re in a stressful situation, if you can calm down [and] control your response to it, this ageing process won’t be quite so rapid”.
